SUMMING UP. 319 



fowl-house, will be ready to come out next Spring in 

 season for corn-planting, and, being liberally applied, 

 will do as much for bis crop as two tons of Guano 

 would, and will strengthen his land far more. If 

 he has no Muck, and no neighbor who can spare it 

 as well as not, let him at midsummer cut all the 

 weeds growing on and around his farm, and in the 

 Fall gather all the leaves that can be impounded, 

 using these as litter for his cattle and beds for his 

 pigs, and he will be agreeably surprised at the bulk 

 of his heap next Spring. 



I am ail intense believer in Home Production. 

 We send ten thousand miles for Guano, and suf- 

 fer the equally valuable excretions of our cities to 

 run to waste in rivers and bays, poisoning or driving 

 away the fish, and filling the air with stench and 

 pestilence. No farmer ever yet intelligently tried to 

 enrich his land and was defeated by lack of material. 

 He may not be able to do all he would like to at 

 first; but persistent effort cannot be baffled. 



11. Shallow culture is the most crying defect of 

 our average farming. Poverty may sometimes excuse 

 it; but the excuse is stretched quite too far. If a 

 farmer has but a poor span of horses, or a light yoke of 

 thin steers, he cannot plow land as it should be plow- 

 ed ; but let him double teams with his neighbor, and 

 plow alternate days on either farm ; or, if this may 

 not be, let him buy or borrow a sub-soil plow, and go 

 once around with his surface plow, then hitch on to 

 the sub-scil, and run another furrow in the hot- 



